


impact

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: part of our belongings (bad things happen bingo) [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (but not a whole lot), Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood, Blood and Injury, Espionage, Foreshadowing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Impaled Chest, Precognition, Rain, Some Plot, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:16:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: A near-fatal moment of distraction during Qui-Gon's apprenticeship.
Relationships: Dooku & Qui-Gon Jinn
Series: part of our belongings (bad things happen bingo) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873021
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	impact

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: blood, chest injuries, (a paper-thin plot)
> 
> written for the Bad Things Happen Bingo square: Impaled Chest 
> 
> Enjoy!

A week. It’s been a full week on this lonely surveillance mission and it was beginning (alright, it was well past _beginning_ ) to get terminally _boring_. And miserable, as cold rain pours down night after night on Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn as he follows his target through water-logged city streets.

The Jedi were tasked with assisting the local planetary guard in ending a smuggling ring of illegal and cruel weapons. These were truly barbaric devices that are designed to maim before they kill, to subjugate and torture. The Republic became involved when the weapons were used in a highly publicized civil conflict. They insisted the trade stop. And in turn, the Outer Rim planets affected insisted on having Jedi to assist. And so, the Council sent them along, with the express mission to stop the flow of weapons as soon as possible. Several other Jedi had been dispatched to assist troops in subduing and disarming groups that were using them, but for their missions to mean anything, the supply had to be cut off. That was the vital mission that Yan Dooku and his padawan had been assigned.

“The weapons have to be coming in from the Outer Rim. They’ve narrowed down the trading point here. I’ll coordinate with the team that has been working on this case. While you’ll follow one of their suspected contacts on-world. His name is Greet Fal, as far as we can tell. He seems to be the center of the communications web.”

“Of course, master.” Tracking a low-level middleman in the operation was the epitome of a padawan’s job. Skulking through the streets, hiding in the shadows.

“I know you’ll put your all into it, padawan,” Dooku said with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, sparkling through the Force, proving he knows what Qui-Gon is thinking. “Be sure to bring the extra waterproof cloak with you. The weather forecast is…not pleasant.”

This was truly one of the perks of training an apprentice, part of the payment for all the passed down wisdom and supervision in the early years. To be able to send them on the least desirable missions. Dooku would remain in the ship in orbit, warm and dry, while Qui-Gon had to follow around a weapons smuggler on the planet's surface, in the pouring rain.

“I won’t let you down, master.”

“Of course.” Dooku sweeps around back to the screen where information from the planetary guard and the other Jedi pours in. “May the Force be with you.”

It is wet. And boring. Greet Fal does very little but laze about days and make rounds of meetings in bars and taverns at night.

Master and apprentice check in at the end of each day. Qui-Gon dutifully submits a list of his target’s contacts, flags ones that look like meetings to buy. Dooku and the guards check his leads. By the end of the third day, they’ve got a treasure trove of information, connected into a spiderweb map of connections. But the head guardsman still hesitates in arresting him.

“They still do not want us to move. Not until they’ve identified the central cache. He’s concerned that if we jump too soon, they’ll flee and set up shop elsewhere and we will not be able to trace them. He wants to wait until we can take them all at once. Cut off this supply chain first. So, padawan mine, if you want to come out of the rain, you have to find their base of operations.”

Qui-Gon inwardly groans. His target has been keeping to the edges of their operation. There seems to be a web of contacts, of drop points and messengers, so convoluted that even with the Force he cannot untangle it. He must be patient. The Force urges caution.

“Yes, master. I will continue watching.”

“Contact me the moment you have something.” The comm cuts out, leaving Qui-Gon to another lonely night following a mid-level smuggler through twisting urban streets.

It’s finally stopped raining, at least. Qui-Gon has not relished the nights of storms he spent following his target around the capitol’s underbelly. Even the smuggler got a reprieve, ducking into taverns and overhangs to conduct his business. Qui-Gon had found what shelter he could but still ended each night soaked through and sniffling.

Tonight, he’s back on the man’s trail through the labyrinthine streets but at least the skies have shown mercy on him. The pavement is still slick, puddles gathering in low dips, with the colorful lights of the building reflecting in them. The streets are more crowded tonight, people out to enjoy the cloudless and warmer evening. Their joy clouds the Force in a way that Qui-Gon would normally relish, but tonight it makes his job harder. The easy happiness of the crowd drowns out the feeling of his target and he has to work that much harder to shield out the distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Something else is different tonight. He searches the feeling, wondering if it is just weariness, or frustration for how hesitant the guards were being. After a moment’s reflection, he dismisses it, centering himself in the present moment. No matter how boring or tiresome he felt this task was, no matter how easy it would be to let himself be swept up in the multitude of distractions this evening offered, this job was still his duty. He can, at least, manage a few more days of this if it helps end the use of these weapons against civilians.

Out of all the Jedi assigned, this was arguably the most vital. Even if all the others succeeded in disarming the various combatants using them, it would be for naught if the central supply was not cut off. More trading routes would just open. Unless they can stop it here and now.

He anchors himself in the Living Force, sifts through the muddle of noise coming from the crowds, and keeps his target always within the range of his perspective. They are delving much deeper into the city’s underbelly tonight. It gives Qui-Gon a brief glimpse of hope, that perhaps they might be getting somewhere concrete. The ground floor of the city was mostly made up of small markets, and clay housing largely occupied by the poorer residents of the planet. The target visits a few shops, buying ordinary supplies, then meets briefly with a new figure, a man in a dark coat, carrying a heavy bag. They exchange whispered words in an alley that Qui-Gon cannot quite hear without getting closer and risking being seen. So he stays put and marks off the newcomer in his log.

The night continues to unfold in much the same way as the others after that. He ends up at a bar for an hour and a half before leaving, slipping back out into the quiet streets, with Qui-Gon playing the shadow. They take two new turns, heading deeper and away from the crowds. It is both a blessing and curse; it is easier to focus on his target here, but he stands out more. There will be no crowd to disappear into if Greet spies him.

And Greet appears tense. Perhaps it had something to do with his conversation with the newcomer. Perhaps he has displeased the organization somehow. Qui-Gon is not particularly bothered by that last bit, as long as it leads them closer to ending this.

Another narrow alley, this one opening out into a small residential square. The target slips around the bend, moving faster, and Qui-Gon hastens to follow him-

It happens fast.

Qui-Gon sees a shadow moving towards him from the right, recognizing the figure in the next second as the new one from earlier in the evening, crouching in wait. The Force shrieks an immediate warning, but Qui-Gon reacts a fraction too slowly. He turns, grabbing onto his saber, but it is too late. The man fires an archaic and oversized crossbow, and Qui-Gon does not move out of the way fast enough to avoid the bolt hurtling towards him.

This is not blaster fire. This is not even the precise cut of a blade. It is nothing he has ever experienced before. The spear tears through flesh, ripping through his body, shattering bone and tearing through muscles. It throws him backward, the point sinking into the clay of the wall to pin him in place. The force of the blow drives air from his lungs. His saber hilt drops from his fingers, forgotten as he grasps the shaft driven into his body. For a second, the pain is held back by shock, then it floods in to attack his senses all at once. His back is one solid, stunning, throb, the entry point of the pole a piercing fire. He brings up a hand to grasp the pole, gasping in a wet breath.

Greet cautiously approaches, wringing his hands together. “Who are you?” he demands. “Why were you following me?”

Qui-Gon thinks it rather obvious that he cannot speak to answer. He would say as much but - well, he cannot speak. He tries it, opening his mouth, but all that comes out of his mouth is a gasped breath that tastes like copper. He tries to take a deeper breath and something deep inside shifts sickeningly and the coppery taste gets stronger.

“I doubt he can answer,” comes another voice. The man who fired the bolt straightens up and steps into the light, slinging his massive crossbow over his shoulders. “But I think I can answer why he was tailing you, _idiot.”_ The blow has knocked his hood back from his face. The man approaches. Qui-Gon cannot even summon his command over the Force to push him away, and movement is far beyond him. He can do nothing but try not to move as the man pulls his braid from the confines of his cloak. “A Jedi.”

“Jedi?! They’re onto us?”

“It appears they are. And you nearly led them straight back to us, Greet, you _fool.”_

Qui-Gon tries to speak again - say something to get himself out of this - but he coughs instead, spitting up blood. His hands tighten on the pole.

“Well, we’ve taken care of the Jedi? And we can clear out before they send more-”

“Don’t you know _anything_ about Jedi? This braid means this one’s just a student; there will be a master somewhere close by. We don’t have _time_ to clear out. And who knows how long he’s been following you?”

Greet shakes his head. “Come on, you know me, man. It can’t have been more than tonight, I totally would have caught him-”

“Right,” the newcomer says like he doesn’t believe him.

Strategically (and not _just_ because there’s a bolt stuck in his lungs and blood continuing to fill his throat), Qui-Gon does _not_ mention that his master is in orbit above the planet, waiting for the signal that he’s located the smugglers' den. Nor does he mention the last week that he’s spent following Greet, nor the amount of information already gathered and transmitted. To do so would likely be a death sentence. Well, he’s probably dying anyway. But that might just speed things along.

Instead of saying any of that, Qui-Gon just coughs again and takes a ragged, gasping breath in.

The one called Greet curses. “What do we do then?”

“We move fast.” The man with the bolt gives him an appraising look. “We can try to distract the master.”

“What do you mean?”

“We leave this one _right_ here.” He grasps Qui-Gon’s chin hard. “Pinned like an insect to a board. You’re not going to last much longer, but long enough. You Jedi can track each other, with your little mystical-” The man waves his fingers. “-Force thing, right? You’ll draw your master here, while we sneak out the back. Be long gone before he finds us.” The mission unravels around him. A week of work, months for the planetary authority. Weapons that will continue to fall into war zones, that will continue to kill and main innocents, because of a lapse in attention and a single wooden spear through his chest.

Even if he survived, Dooku was going to _kill_ him.

Qui-Gon forces a breath into his lungs, where it rattles. “Won’t work,” he manages. “They _will_ find you.”

“I don’t think they will - _urgh!”_

Qui-Gon managed to get up the strength to spit blood into the man’s face and rasp a local curse he’d learned from watching a tavern brawl several nights earlier.

The smuggler springs back with a shout of disgust. “Filthy Jedi. What? Trying to get me to kill you? End your misery? Now _that’s_ not going to work.” He grasps the shaft of the bolt and bores it just a bit farther into the wall. Qui-Gon gasps at the movement. “I’m going to leave you alive.” He bends in close. His hand slips into the folds of his cloak, quickly finding his comm. “And we’re going to clear out our supplies, destroy all the evidence. I’ve got a team that can evacuate the goods very quickly. And then I’m going to get my friends, and we’re going to set up an ambush and wait for your master to show up to rescue you. You’ll be the bait. And we’ll let you watch your master die. I hope you know that it will be entirely your fault. Now stay put, little Jedi.”

Then the man straightens up, slipping Qui-Gon’s comm into his own pocket and leaving him gasping in pain on the wall - but with an unknown extra item. A small tracking device, activated to transmit directly to the orbiting guard station, slipped into the hem of his coat.

Perhaps Dooku will show mercy if Qui-Gon manages not to completely ruin everything before he drowns in his own blood.

Still wiping blood and spit off his face, the man spares him a last disgusted look before hurrying off, trailed by Greet, glancing backward nervously. Qui-Gon is left alone.

He gives in to a groan of pain once they’re out of sight, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him. His hands are shaking. He grasps the shaft of the spear, wanting desperately to tear the _thing_ out of his body, but he manages to hold back, to control himself. He takes a slow, deep breath and shuts his eyes.

The Force feels the wrongness in his body, wails at the disrupted muscles, the torn blood vessels, and chipped bones. The worst of it is his right lung. There is something _wrong_ with it - it’s not filling with air as it should. His breath crackles and doesn’t satisfy. But luckily the bolt missed his spine, missed vital arteries. Qui-Gon breathes in the light, breathes out the dark of pain and encroaching death. He lays one hand flat on the shaft, extends the other out along the side. Centered, he carefully uses the Force to slowly draw the bolt out of the wall. He threads it slowly and carefully back through his chest, trying not to cause more damage. The pain is immense but he holds it at arm's length, breathes through it, focusing on nothing else but the task at hand.

And then the pole is out of his body, drawn back through his damaged torso and floating in front of him. Qui-Gon releases his hold over it and allows it to clatter onto the ground.

Then he drops hard to his knees, gasping for breath. He manages to catch himself on one hand before he face plants, pressing the other to the wound. His chest heaves and he spits more blood out onto the stone. It’s flowing over his hand in a steady stream now. The bolt had held some of the blood vessels shut; tearing it out had opened the floodgates. Quite literally, one of the first lessons in field first aid is _not_ to remove impaled objects. But he had to do it. He cannot fail.

He wipes the blood off his chin and staggers to his feet. The tracking device is in his hand, his backup comm in the other. He has to move fast. At the next market stall, he tears down a scrap of curtain, wadding it up and stuffing it into the wound to try and at least keep some of his blood in his body. He folds his cloak around him and shakily starts after his quarry, keeping the tracking device in his hand. He thumbs his comm, giving the signal to be ready, that he is getting close. He can vaguely hear a verbal response, a request for something, likely an explanation, but he doesn’t answer. It takes everything he has to keep on his feet, to keep moving towards his goal. The Force surges around him, holds together bone and sinew deep inside, keeps him upright and breathing and moving forwards, for now at least.

The beacon has slowed, the smuggler has stopped running. Qui-Gon slows as well, creeping along the side of a building. He can hear the high, panicked voice of Greet, the deeper voice of the other attacker issuing commands. The flurry of activity is obvious. The beacon has stopped moving.

He’s found it. He’s found the smuggler’s lair.

Qui-Gon collapses, unable to go a step further. He activates the emergency protocol on his comm link. He leans against the wall and tries to catch his breath. He can’t. There’s a wet, rasping quality to his breathing, a crackling in his lungs. The curtain he had used to pack the wound is soaked through with blood. He is cold and shivering. And very, very tired.

Qui-Gon doesn’t realize how much he’d been using the Force to keep his insides together and the pain manageable until he lets it go. Something inside shifts and he coughs wetly, slumping further against the wall, curling around the agonizing pain in his chest. Now that he’s released the iron focus he’d had on the Physical Force that had been sustaining his body, other aspects filter back in. He can feel the stretched bond with his master, dim and distant echoes of indignant fury, the insistence upon an answer that Qui-Gon is far from able to give.

_You should probably hurry,_ he would say, if he were still able to speak. _Before they get away._

Another rush of insistent emotions through their connection in the Force, but Qui-Gon cannot answer anymore. The world spins. His vision narrows, the darkness closing in on him. He’s too exhausted and drained to care as he lets unconsciousness take him.

“-and a _trail of blood_ through the _streets!”_

Qui-Gon groans and covers his face with his hands. He’d been gradually easing back into consciousness - of course, directly into a furious lecture.

“I don’t know _what_ you were thinking,” his master’s clipped tones welcome him back to the world of the living. “Tearing that thing out of your chest to…to _race_ about the streets after those smugglers, like a wild-”

“It worked, did it not?” Qui-Gon drops his hands. “I’m assuming it worked. I’m assuming I’d likely be dead otherwise.”

Dooku huffs. “Yes. It worked. The local guard was able to round up the smugglers. The gentleman you were tracking - that Greet fellow - has even betrayed their suppliers. So the flow of such barbaric weapons will be stopped, in this corner of the galaxy at least. Though it very well might _not_ have. You have not answered the question, padawan: what exactly were you _thinking?”_

Qui-Gon is not quite sure where in the lecture it had been posed as a question and not an observation on his foolishness. “It was not the way I intended to find their base of operations. But it quickly became the only option.”

_“Or_ you could have _stayed put,_ not risk everything by doing the exact opposite you’re supposed to do with such a wound and then running after dangerous criminals. What would you have done if they had caught you? Which wouldn’t have been difficult, given the staggering, bloody trail you left. Or if we had not arrived on time, hm? Were you intending on fighting the whole crew, armed with crossbows and blasters, and you with naught by your saber and a gaping hole in your chest? Would that have constituted a successful end to the mission?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_. Of course, you don’t know, you _weren’t_ thinking.” Dooku sighs heavily. “You never _think_ , Qui-Gon. And it’s going to get you - or someone else - killed one of these days.” They lapse into silence.

Qui-Gon can still feel the tension in the room. He drops his hand by his sides, wincing as the motion sends a shooting pain through his torso. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“You’re going to say that I once again ignored the prompting of the Unifying Force. I should have seen the ambush coming.” He tilts his head to the side. More of the room is coming into focus. He doesn’t recognize their surroundings. A med center on-world then, not their ship. Dooku sits in a chair beside his bed, arms crossed over his chest. He does not look pleased. His cloak is thrown over the bottom of the bed.

“Yes. You should have. _Balance_ , young one. You must have _balance_. You must not get so lost in the present that you lose sight of how the Force can prompt you to the future. Even seconds of foresight can mean the difference between escape and, oh, just to give one example, ending up with two feet of spear in your lung.”

“But I still completed the mission,” he says with a tired, half-smile. “I did find the smugglers’ den.”

Dooku sighs. “Indeed. Barely. And you nearly lost your life in the process. Do you understand that, padawan? Hm? I found you unconscious, in a pool of blood. You were barely breathing. When we got you here, your heart was beating so slowly that the droids could scarcely register it. Broken ribs, a punctured lung, you’d lost a _third_ of your blood volume. A mere centimeter’s difference and you would have _died_ , do you understand?”

Dooku is using his worst scolding voice. Qui-Gon groans and throws his arm over his face. There’s no telling how much longer this lecture would go on and whatever method to deaden the pain that had been used is starting to wear off. The pain in his chest spikes with each breath. _Force, end my suffering._

“But would that not be a form of attachment, master? We should not be so afraid of death that we sacrifice our duty to preserve our own lives. The weapons they were selling were being used on innocent civilians. If we did not catch them-”

“If you did not catch them on your little suicide mission, we would have found another way. This was only one path forward of many, padawan.”

“But-”

“There is a difference, _child,”_ At seventeen Qui-Gon is hardly a child, but knows far better than to say that to his master when he was in such a mood. “-between listening to the will of the Force, between dangerous attachment, and risking life unnecessarily. This would have been a reckless, foolish waste of your life, had you died in pursuit of these petty smugglers. Sometimes you need to know when to withdraw, when there is a greater purpose to be served by _surviving_. It is true, that we Jedi must not be so attached to our lives that we sacrifice innocents to keep it, or ignore the will of the Force, or, worst yet, seek to use the Force itself to sustain our lives. But that does not mean we throw ourselves away without cause.”

Qui-Gon drops his arm again. “I’m sorry, master.”

“I would say that the only apology I require is your assurance that you will not be so reckless again, that you will be more _careful_ , but I know you too well, padawan mine. I have the sense that your recklessness will come back to haunt you again.” Dooku looks very tired all of a sudden. And older. Weary. The currents of the Force are stained with a strange sort of melancholy.

“I _am_ sorry,” Qui-Gon says, quieter. More truly chagrined. He’s not just trying to get out of the lecture now. “And I will take into account what you said.”

“You’d better. There will be some in the coming days who will praise your heroics, but know that every second of that praise, I will be coming up with the most _diabolical_ punishment I can possibly think of. I’m contemplating archival work. There’s a little-used section of the archive on the budgetary reports of the Senate that has been in need of indexing for some time. And that’s just a start.”

Qui-Gon groans.

“You should sleep, padawan. So you can recover. I also foresee many hours in the practice rooms. I might even recruit Master Yoda to the effort, he’s not had the pleasure of dueling with you in some months.”

“He’ll _kill_ me.”

“No, my apprentice, he won’t kill you. Just leave you with a few smarting bruises, which you _more_ than deserve for the scare you gave me.” Dooku scoffs. “Complete radio silence, then _that_ out of nowhere, the emergency beacon, _zero_ response-”

“I was rather distracted…holding everything together.” He laughs a little and it turns into a cough. The edge of the bed dips. Dooku’s hand rests on his chest and eases some of the tension. Torn muscles relax from their spasm. He turns instinctively closer towards the warm light of his master. He wraps his hand around Dooku’s where it rests on his chest and eventually drifts to sleep when the pain has let up a bit.

He wakes later and it is very dark. The only illumination comes from a dim lamp at his bedside and the pinkish-purple light of the moon outside.

Dooku is sitting back in the chair, one leg crossed over the other. He’s staring into the shadowy darkness with a strange expression on his face.

And, of course, senses Qui-Gon’s return to consciousness immediately. “Sleep, padawan, a little longer. We’ve got a long day ahead of us if we don’t want to spend another night here.”

“Is something the matter? There wasn’t-”

“Nothing, Qui-Gon,” Dooku says quietly. “I simply had…” He smiles faintly, still looking tired and drawn. Like he had aged a decade in the last few hours. “Never mind.” But he still stares into the shadows like he’s looking for something. The feeling of melancholy has returned.

Qui-Gon watches him for a while, contemplating the forlorn strain in the Force, before dropping back off to sleep.

In the morning, there is no trace of the night’s strange mournful mood. Dooku has returned to being the picture of vitality - and is once again incensed. The lecture from the previous day continues as he helps Qui-Gon back into his tunics, throwing the cloak around his shoulders.

“Honestly, the audacity, _complete_ radio silence-”

“You’ve covered this part before, master.”

“Well, I will _continue_ covering until you get it through your thick skull how profoundly reckless your actions were, for naught by a low-level-” Qui-Gon is spared by a knock at their door.

“They’re ready for you, master Jedi.”

Dooku sighs. “Come on. Up. Time to report. Then time to go home. And the healing halls, of course, my foolish padawan.”

“How long will this continue?”

Dooku helps him to his feet, bracing him with a strong arm around his waist. “Oh, a while longer I think. As long as it takes for you not to frighten me like that again, padawan.” There is that feeling again. A strange anticipation, a melancholy that feels like it’s far away.

“I will endure, I suppose,” Qui-Gon says lightly, to disperse the mood.

“I should hope so.”

**Author's Note:**

> Avoiding doing the hard work of writing redemption arcs by writing fics set decades in the past? Me? Nooo... XD 
> 
> Anyways, I love the small glimpses we get of this part of the 'disaster lineage' and I _do_ have a WIP that goes into the more complicated emotional/morality shit but I am also going to take advantage of some of the plotless whump potential of this part of the timeline. 
> 
> Second _Star Wars_ fic, I would say I'm at about two thirds the anxiety level I was at when posting the first one, so I'm counting that as progress. Okay maybe like. 80% anxiety. XD 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Kudos/comments/shares/frogs always appreciated and feel free to come find me on [tumblr!](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/)


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